PINNATED GROUSE * 217 
(locally pronounced héth’n, as this grouse is uni- 
versally called) is well known to almost every one. 
Even in such seaport towns as Cottage City and 
Edgarstown, most of the people have at least heard 
of it, and in the thinly settled interior it is frequently 
seen in the roads or along the edges of the cover by 
the farmers, or started in the depths of the woods 
by the hounds of the rabbit and fox hunters. 
“Its range extends, practically, over the entire 
wooded portion of the island, but the bird is not found 
regularly or at all numerously outside an area of about 
forty square miles. This area comprises most of the 
elevated central portions of the island, although it also 
touches the sea at not a few points on the north and 
south shores. In places it rolls into great rounded 
hills and long, irregular ridges, over which are scat- 
tered stretches of second-growth woods, often miles 
in extent, and composed chiefly of scarlet, black, white 
and post oaks, from fifteen to forty feet in height. Here 
and there, where the valleys spread out broad and 
level, are fields which were cleared by the early set- 
tlers more than a hundred years ago, and which still 
retain sufficient fertility to yield very good crops of 
English hay, corn, potatoes and other vegetables. 
Again, this undulating surface gives way to wide, level, 
sandy plains, covered with a growth of bear, chinqua- 
pin and post-oak scrub, from knee to waist high, so 
stiff and matted as to be almost impenetrable; or to 
rocky pastures, dotted with thickets of sweet fern, bay- 
